Islamabad :According to a rough estimate, a wedding with four main functions in a banquet hall or marquee costs approximately Rs3 to 4 million. The expense incudes decoration, food, cash spent on a wedding dress and embellished cloths that the bride usually wears only once, heavy gold jewelry, and expensive make over.
Thanks to morning shows, movies, peer pressure and every girls dream to look the best on their wedding day, the parents submit to the social trends and the events are increasing and becoming more and more extravagant with each passing day. No one might have heard about the bridal shower, ‘Qawali’ night before but now invitations for these wedding events are becoming common. Every event means new dresses and every new dress means thousands of rupees for the bride.
And the wedding dress beats all the dresses. Every bride has a fairytale fantasy regarding her wedding and the first and foremost thing she thinks about is the dress in which her prince charming would see her and fall in love with her all over again and then take her away into his magical world. No doubt, dress is the most important thing for a bride while starting her preparations and which is why no girl compromises in this regard going all out and spending millions rupees for that perfect fairytale dress.
“But After marriage, that fairytale dress loses all its importance and stays in the closet for years gathering nothing but dust and termites,” said Sehrish Raza, founder of an initiative BizBride, which encourages and connect people who want to share their wedding dresses with those who are planning to get married, in almost half the price.
“This startup developed with the idea that why not revamp your wardrobe and share the most precious thing of your life with someone else. It can save someone to spent all their budget on wedding dress. We think that life has much more to offer so take some burden off your wallet and put it to explore new things rather than being indebted at the end of the month because of spontaneous shopping spree you went on from your favorite brand,” she said.
Sehrish has another very interesting angle to share about going extravagant with cloths especially on weddings. “Fashion industry is the second greatest polluter of freshwater in the world. 80 billion items of clothing are produced yearly leaving 2.5 billion pounds of waste. A single t-shirt takes 2,700 liters of water to make, enough for a person to drink over 2.5 years. And these numbers are increasing exponentially every passing year. We aim to play our part in helping ensure this situation doesn't get worst.”
Their solution is simple; Give one + Take one = Zero damage+ happy earth and happy us. “We want to create a movement in which rather than hoarding clothes people will start sharing their wardrobes with each other helping them revamp their wardrobe without having to punch a hole through their pockets. This way rather than buying new clothes, people will start sharing with each other, decreasing the demand for the production and decreasing the wastage produced by clothing each year,” she said.
With this initiative, they want to create a global virtual cupboard in every household where women rather than throwing out or locking up their old clothes, can add them to their virtual wardrobe building a virtual network where people can share and wear; saving, earning and hydrating the earth one dress at a time.”